


Answers

by openhearts



Category: Glee
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-08
Updated: 2010-12-08
Packaged: 2018-10-09 07:30:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10407012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openhearts/pseuds/openhearts
Summary: In my head this takes place sometime in the same universe as Drunk.For soufflegtaylah's prompt for December 6th, though this doesn't really have much of anything to do with the prompt. Taylah, I tried, but these two are stubborn, y'know? Hope you like this anyway.Originally posted at LiveJournal.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [soufflegtaylah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soufflegtaylah/gifts).



He cracks his neck and leans his chin on his fist, eyes flit across the paper. He draws a decisive red dash through a wrong answer. When he goes to circle the correct one he has to think for a moment – he’s forgotten. It’s late and dark and his brain shorts out too quickly, leaves him stalled on the discomfort of his chair and dull crackling annoyance hovering in his muscles. He’s digging through his bag for the answer key when she walks in.

The door hangs a few inches open behind her. She places her feet together neatly, carefully, as if she’s hitting a mark. There’s a click against the linoleum from her oxford shoes. Raspberry red socks inch up toward her bare knees – her dress is short but the neckline is high and wide, cutting across her collar bone, edged in scalloped stitching.

“Don’t you think-”

He takes in a breath.

“- we should talk about this? Like adults?”

He huffs it out.

“I’m an adult, Rachel. You’re not an adult.”

It’s a pathetic stance to be taking at this point but he’s nothing if not committed to it. Be the grown up, he coaches himself mentally.

She preens a little, a dip of her chin refuting his point effortlessly. Her lips twist slyly as they open.

“Don’t- don’t. We can’t do this.”

“We can’t do this?” She steps forward until she’s right at his desk and rests her fingers on the edge. “We can’t talk now that-”

“We’ll just be making everything worse.”

His voice is low and hoarse and he looks back at the text on the paper in front of him. Tildas worm their ways across the page, upside down question marks suddenly make him feel tilted off balance. He brings his hands up to his face and sighs into them with his eyes closed. When he runs them up into his hair he curls his fingers in and grips. The tight pain in his scalp clears his brain a little.

She’s touching his shoulder suddenly, having inched around to lean her hips against the edge of the desk next to him.

“I know you think what we did was horrible. Probably the worst thing you could do as a teacher.”

He pulls his hands away and shakes his head. “You don’t understand what-”

“Why do you always do that? Why do you always assume I can’t possibly understand what’s going on here?” She leans off the desk and steps away. “I wish you would stop trying to convince yourself I’m still a child.”

“You are. Rachel you’re a kid.”

She glances upwards in an expression of exasperation. He can only stare back helplessly, elbows propped on the arm rests of his chair and his hands hanging limp over his lap.

She steps back toward him, into his space this time, and pulls herself up to sit on the desk, her feet dangling with ankles crossed. She regards him for a long moment, then stares off into space for a few more.

“You’re so exhaustingly stubborn,” she sighs. It’s a soul-deep lament, coming from her. A laugh breaks out of his chest, too loud for the room.

“I’m stubborn?” He leans back in his chair and folds his hands loosely. “Okay,” he adds, rolling his eyes.

She straightens. “I may be stubborn but at least I’m not in denial.”

“I’m not in denial.”

“Yes you are.”

“No I’m not.”

“You are.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Well then you’re not the adult in this situation either. And I think you’ve just soundly proven that.”

He glares at her and turns the chair back and forth a few inches. She’s scolding him. After letting the silence lie for a few moments he figures he’s conceded.

“What are you doing here this late?” He asks, having lost the argumentative tone from a moment ago.

She uncrosses her ankles and swings her feet a little, heels tapping against the drawer front, and leans on her palms on the edge of the desk.

“Looking for you.”

She eyes him expectantly. He leans forward in his chair and rests his elbows on the desk.

“Yeah,” he sighs in assent.

He focuses for a moment on the test still in front of him, red pen lying across it with the tip pointing covertly at Rachel’s thigh. She reaches over and picks up the pen and circles the right answer on the question he’d marked just before she’d come in.

He nods, admitting defeat on all fronts. He’s too quickly exhausted in opposition with her, and he knows it, and he doesn’t care. She holds the pen out for him and he takes it and grips it at both ends with his hands. He squeezes so tight it will soon bend and then break. Before it does she takes it from him and lays it back on the paper. He doesn’t look up, but he turns his hand up and lets her thread her fingers through his.

“We’re going to have to stop this.” He says quietly.

“But not today,” she finishes. He looks up and she’s smiling. A little sadly, without resolve. He could tell her now, that she’s not a kid, that he knows this, but she knows all of it already. He would tell her he’s sorry, but he’s not. That, he’s sorry for.

She rubs her thumb back and forth along his knuckle before squeezing his hand. He squeezes back before letting go, straightening in his chair, and picking up the pen again.

“I have to finish these,” he clarifies, clinging to his fractured neutrality for a few moments again. Rachel just nods, slips off his desk, and goes to sit in one of the desks in the front row. He maintains a leaden focus on the tests in front of him, attempting to avoid her dubious smile.

She sighs with a note of self-satisfaction and takes a book out of her backpack. It takes him around twenty minutes to finish the tests, twice as long as it should.

They walk in opposite directions to their cars in lots on either end of McKinley’s campus. By the time they pull into the parking lot of his apartment building it’s dark out, so dark that anyone glancing out their window wouldn’t quite be able to tell anything was going on other than two people walking into the building together.


End file.
